Introducing the new Gandi Mail

Recently, we massively overhauled our Gandi Mail service on #gandiv5, with an aim to better adapt it to your needs, .

Following the announcement of our new webmail platform SOGo, which includes a calendar, a task list, an address book, and greater accessibility across platforms, and following the activation of Sieve rules — allowing you to manage filters and auto-replies — we are happy to introduce you to the new Gandi Mail service.

What’s new with Gandi Mail?

If you are familiar with Gandi Mail up until now, the basic email service included with a domain name has consisted of, since it’s inception, five mailboxes and 1 GB of disk space, with 1,000 mailboxes as well as additional disk space available with the purchase of a Mail Pack.

With the new Gandi Mail, though, that’s changing. The new service introduces two new kinds of mailboxes: Standard and Premium. This change primarily has to do with massively increasing the amount of disk space allowed per mailbox. While the old Gandi Mail had a 1 GB disk space quota for the entire service (whether that consisted of a single mailbox or the full five mailboxes), each Standard mailbox is allowed up to 3 GB of storage. Per mailbox. If you need more than 3 GB for a single mailbox, you can pay to upgrade it to a Premium mailbox, which has 50 GB of storage per mailbox.

The new Gandi Mail, then, consists of the following:

Two Standard type mailboxes, with 3 GB of disk space each, included with your domain

The option to subscribe to extra mailboxes, either as Standard (3 GB) or Premium (50 GB) mailboxes

What will happen to my five free mailboxes, then?

Don’t worry, we have you covered. All five free Gandi Mail mailboxes that you currently have from before will be converted to Standard mailboxes (each with 3 GB of storage space) for no charge.

If you want to take advantage of the new Gandi Mail, though, you’ll need to migrate your account to our new #gandiv5 platform, if you haven’t already of course. Once migrated, you just need to change over to the new Gandi Mail from your dashboard.

Please note: once you have switched over to the new Gandi Mail, you will no longer be able to renew your domain from our legacy platform (including via the API), or manage your email service from the legacy platform either.

You can then either use Roundcube, our current webmail platform at webmail.gandi.net or you can of course use the new webmail platform, SOGo, which will also be available from the #gandiv5 dashboard.

Remember: the contacts that you have saved in Roundcube will not be automatically imported into SOGo. You’ll need to export them from Roundcube and import them into SOGo following the instructions in our online documentation.

How much will the extra mailboxes cost in the new Gandi Mail?

As stated above, the new Gandi Mail service included free with the purchase of a domain name now consists of 2 Standard mailboxes with 3 GB of storage each (previously, the free service consisted of five mailboxes sharing a total storage space of 1 GB).

We’re now selling additional mailboxes as Standard and Premium mailboxes, at the following rates:

$0.40* per Standard mailbox per month at A rates

$2.00** per Premium mailbox per month

(These are the prices at A rates. As with all our products, the pricing tiers decrease in price as you reach each progressive level of dollars spent).

As with the previous Mail Pack service, these additional mailboxes will still be linked to the domain name registration in the following ways:

the length of the subscription extends until the expiration date of the domain in question

they will be renewed along with your domain name

they have no commitment attached; even if you’ve purchased them for longer, you may choose to delete them and receive a pro-rated credit for the time not used

How to migrate to the new Gandi Mail

If you don’t specifically choose to migrate all or some of your mailboxes to the new Gandi Mail platform, nothing changes, even if you’ve already migrated your account to #gandiv5.

Once we’ve migrated every last customer to #gandiv5, if you haven’t already moved over to the new Gandi Mail platform as well, your mailboxes will automatically be converted to either Standard or Premium mailboxes, depending on how much disk space they each consume at that moment.

When you migrate your mailboxes, you’ll see a table summarizing the conversion of your mailboxes, which will allow you to see just how much of an improvement the new Gandi Mail is over the old.

Of course, we’re available to answer any questions you may have or to help walk you through the migration, either of your account or just of your mailboxes. Don’t hesitate to contact our Customer care team should you run into any problems, or just need a hand.

*in USD. Standard mailboxes are €0.35, £0.31, or NT$11 at A rates**in USD. Premium mailboxes are €1.75, £1.57, or NT$63 at A rates

Its really a trade off between 5 mailboxs (1 GB) or 2 mailboxes ( 3gb each).

I buy domains in gandi just because it has 5 mailboxs and its a killer feature if you ask me.

New plans are less attractive, when compared to competation.

Andrew

08.08.2017 - 16:13

For what it’s worth, we did make it easier for customers with existing mailboxes: anything you have currently under the previous service plan (5 mailboxes, 1 GB total space) will be converted into the new standard mailboxes. So if you have 3, 4 or 5 Gandi Mail mailboxes, you’ll get free Standard mailboxes (3 GB each) for free.

Dusan

22.08.2017 - 22:38

Killer feature that will be sorely missed 🙁

Not being able to create free email account as need arises, for the future domains/needs, or for the ones where I use two email accounts but may need more, is a very bad idea.

I don’t understand rationale behind this decision, at all. Few more cents, maybe, but oh boy I am already considering if I need another domain here or elsewhere.

Five email accounts was one of the features that makes Gandi stand out, I am not sure what makes Gandi special after this change.

Andrew

22.08.2017 - 22:59

Sorry to hear the changes in the mail service are the tipping point for you. If I understand correctly, you like being able to create a free email address for a limited time frame, is that the use-case? Or is just that two is your baseline and you often end up going above that? I’d be happy to raise your issue with our product team, but perhaps you’d like to detail your use-case in your own words? If so, feel free to email that to feedback@gandi.net.

Dusan

22.08.2017 - 23:25

@Andrew:

Thanks for your response, I will contact feedback with the details.

Short version: I am having some five domains registered here (and very actively used), at least two of them are seriously using Gandi as a reliable IMAP email host (I don’t care much about webmail). Both domains use less than 300gb each, but it is very convenient to have spare email addresses that can be quickly created. I don’t stockpile email so having 3Gb means little. Not being able to create another (up to five) email when needed is so big issue that I spent last few hours looking for what other registrars offer.

One domain has two email addresses, other one started with two and now has four. I don’t mind paying few cents more but having to go trough any kind of procedure other than simply creating new email (if I have spare as I do with five) is huge pain.

Haven’t find any similar offer to what ‘old’ Gandi had, but I didn’t search much yet. If you have to change email rules at least consider having both old and new offer, so users can choose.

Having two boxes instead of five, with 3Gb each, means 3 less possible mail slots with increase in size which doesn’t do anything for me.

Dusan

22.08.2017 - 23:29

I meant 300mb each of course.

Dusan

23.08.2017 - 05:44

Andrew, I have sent email to feedback@. I really hope this bad decision can be reconsidered or at least offered as one of the options, not the only option. Thanks.

Client

08.08.2017 - 17:20

Do you plan on introducing DKIM?

Andrew

08.08.2017 - 19:02

It’s on our radar, definitely, but no timeframe for introducing DKIM at the moment. For now, SPF records for Gandi Mail are present by default in zone files.

Anonymous

10.08.2017 - 16:18

Any chance of Gandi Mail support for DIME (Dark Internet Mail Environment)?

Andrew

10.08.2017 - 17:04

From looking on github, it seems like the DIME developers themselves admit to it not being stable, so, short answer is no, we won’t be implementing DIME anytime soon.

That’s not to say we don’t support solutions to the security and privacy problems with email and internet messaging in general. One of our supported projects is caliopen: https://www.caliopen.org/en/ which I’d encourage you to check out. It’s not a different mail protocol, but when we’re talking about moving away from the existing email protocols for security and privacy reasons, something like this tool will be necessary to carry the general public at least through that transition. The privacy index is also a feature you might find interesting.

The switch to the new SOGo / Gandi Mail looks like a big improvement and congratulations on launching it, however there are some points missing from the documentation which I hope can be added.

For regular mailbox accounts, I find the aliases very useful. Is this feature also available on the new system?

The ‘forwarding addresses’ function is also very useful, as it lets me set up admin@, abuse@ (etc…) ‘virtual’ accounts without needing to create a full mailbox account. Is this feature also available on the new system?

Lastly, are there any changes at all to the IMAP/SMTP settings? I use a spare account for servers to email me in case of cron errors, will I have to edit anything on the server if I migrate that account?

Overall the new Gandi Mail looks very good (and the pricing for extra mailboxes is very reasonable), but I cannot migrate without knowing the answers to the above questions. Please add them to your documentation.

Hi Tom, thanks for your feedback!
Regarding your questions: forward and aliases are still available, yes. And we’re not changing anything to the tech settings, so your automatic emails should work as usual.
Feel free to contact us on feedback@gandi.net if you want more details!

Stephan

11.08.2017 - 08:42

In which country or countries are the data centers for Gandi Mail located?

Andrew

11.08.2017 - 15:42

They are located in France.

Diane kimantas

11.08.2017 - 13:21

I agree with the comments that losing the 5 mailboxes is a backwards move. Out of all my clients there is only one who required more email storage and that’s because her business requires huge attachments to be emailed.
This change is wrapped up to sound better for the customer, but in fact for most it won’t be. Gandi however will gain. Not a great move

Charles

14.08.2017 - 10:03

I have just been looking at the beta SOGo webmail page. When I try to change the time zone from Europe/Paris to Europe/London the time does not change. London is still shown as 1 hour ahead of the actual time.

Xadiq

16.08.2017 - 04:25

Does the mailbox offer catch-all feature, where messages to misspelled email addresses don’t get rejected but instead get forwarded to a designated account? Thank you.

Andrew

16.08.2017 - 23:49

No plans at the moment for a catch-all feature, no.

A User

27.08.2017 - 12:00

Currently on another registrar, but very impressed with 2 standard 3GB mailboxes included with each domain. If ‘catchall’ becomes implemented I’ll switch to you guys.

KP

20.08.2017 - 09:35

The new SoGo webmail doesn’t support nested e-mail folders? They appear empty.

Any plans on updating the anti-SPAM system? My last email service provider had a spam filter, spam folder, black and white list capabilities, SPAM threshold parameter, and Spam Assassin integration per email account. This was all available from an online console separate from the webmail interface.

I was surprised to find out last night that Gandi’s system is more of an on/off switch where you either 1) Don’t get any SPAM as determined by Gandi’s black box system (thereby loosing false positives), or 2) Using the anti-spam protection and getting all spam sent to your account marked as SPAM.

It’s going to be hard to live without that functionality. Excessive SPAM of my old account is the main reason I got a new email address. I need all the tools to manage SPAM!

Also, I concure with liking 5 separate email accounts to switch around at will to use to manage SPAM; using multiple accounts and aliases is part of my new SPAM fighting strategy. I use IMAP and the number of accounts is more attractive to me versus less accounts with more storage.

Chris

28.08.2017 - 00:57

While I only use mailboxes on a few of my domain names, I do use more than two on several of them. Sad to see the 5 mailboxes go. It’s one of the reasons I liked gandi. No way do I use even the 1 GB of email space, I’ll never need 3 GB.

+1 for the detailed blog explanation on the move, would have been nice to get this sent as an email too.. -1 for taking away my option to create 20 odd mailboxes by purchasing a single mailpack. All of my mailboxes use less than 50mb… but anyway.

One point; can you provide a little more detail on migrating my users to the new SOGo platform? I have an A record pointing to the old Roundcube IP 217.70.182.6 but can’t seem to pinpoint an IP to use for SOGo.. keep getting vhost unknown errors.. ps; can’t put a CNAME entry because it won’t get past my corporate packet inspecting firewall.

Hi Brian,
We don’t have a process for you to migrate your users to Sogo yet.
I’ll check with our dedicated team to get more info on this.

Richard

13.09.2017 - 08:42

Hi there

If I migrate to the new mail system do I need to make any changes to my email client? I use POP3/SMTP with The Bat!

Nicolas

13.09.2017 - 14:47

No, no need to change anything

Richard

13.09.2017 - 16:42

Thanks

Felix

27.09.2017 - 15:46

Add me to the list of folks who’d rather have five smaller mailboxes than two 3GB boxes. I keep the boxes cleaned out so I never even come close to approaching the old 1GB limit. Admittedly, I don’t presently have more than two boxes associated with any domain registered with Gandi but I have had five active on a couple domains in the past.

It’s handy and gives me flexibility. I’m not pleased with the change.

BTW, when’s the switchover in case I want to reserve five boxes per domain?

Andrew

04.10.2017 - 15:23

Thanks for the feedback. Any chance we could drill down on the specific cases you want to have extra mailboxes for? As for the switchover date, it’s up in the air and would be tied to whenever we actually close down v4 for good. At present, you have to migrate to the new Gandi Mail from the v5 interface in order to use it, so any time before you migrate your mail service (even if you’ve already migrated your account to v5), you would still have the option to use the old system.

Joe

05.10.2017 - 17:10

Andrew asked for usage. Mine would be:

1 account for me (pop smtp)
1 for a second user (pop smtp)
1 just for use on mobile devices, probably using imap
1 catchall (pop smtp)

and i wouldn’t need 1 GB on the imap one.

Andrew

05.10.2017 - 17:35

Hi Joe! Thanks for the details. A couple of things: first, neither the old mail service nor the new mail service has a catchall feature. We may add such a feature at some point, but when we’ve looked at this in the past they were a strain on our infrastructure for a free email service. Personally I think it’s worth revisiting again. Second, I don’t understand what you mean with the “1 just for use on mobile devices.” Are you saying you want a mailbox like “mobile@example.tld” that would be shared across several devices but would be distinct from either of the other two mailboxes for yourself and for a second user? If that’s the case, I’m curious about what the advantages of such a set up are.

Joe

05.10.2017 - 22:18

Andrew – I don’t have an option to reply to you, just again to Felix.

A * as an alias makes what I call a catchall account – seems to be working for me and I don’t see how it can be much of a strain?

I prefer to keep all email for my main account in one mail program on one machine – I don’t use imap or want to store email on your servers. That is why I would want to use a separate account to provide some email capability on other (mobile) machines.

Joe

05.10.2017 - 17:02

New customer and looks like I got and can keep 5 mailboxes.

I don’t want anything sent to the domain to bounce so I need a catchall which is half of the new allocation and it may never have any real usage.

I don’t use the webmail interface, I might use imap on one account but don’t need anything like 3GB of storage.

I would rather have 5 with 1G shared than 2 with 3G each.. Is the provision cost much different?

Hi Alice!
Yes, it’s safe. The mailboxes and the credentials won’t be changed, you won’t lose any mail and there is no downtime due to the migration. Depending on your configuration, the migration process might need some time to end, but we made is as seamless as possible.

Ingo

12.10.2017 - 09:32

I think the new system looks really good! But even after reading the news a second time I am still a bit confused about the billing changes:

On an existing domain:
Case 1: I have 2 free mailboxes in use. Will I be billed if I switch and will want to use up to 3 more standard email boxes?
Case 2: I have 5 free mailboxes in use. Will I be billed for 3 of them if I make the switch?

Also could you give some insight into the backup in place for emails, especially the premium one? 50GB premium for that price looks good, I am tempted to switch one domain just because of that, if the availability and backup are adequate.

Hi Ingo!
Thanks for your feedback, it means a lot to us.
Regarding the migration, you will keep 5 standard mailboxes for free for any domains bought or transferred at Gandi before the launch of our new offer.
About the backup, it’s not here yet, but that’s something we would like to offer in the future to our customers. We just need to finish #gandiV5 before 🙂